It’s a candid conversation, and Lara is a candid entrepreneur. The venture capital industry still skews heavily male, with women representing only 8.6% of VCs. Not only that, but her product is for the vagina. She has to be both blunt and unapologetic in order to get her message across – and for potential investors to understand just how ripe this market is for disruption.
From Complicated Fertility Journey to Innovation Pathway
The best innovations are often born from need, and Lara’s path to entrepreneurship started with her own fertility journey - seven rounds of IVF undertaken over the course of a year. Despite being a doctor and arguably better equipped to administer the medication than many women going through IVF, she noted the difficulty – and discomfort – of administrating the medication herself.
“I took the stuff home, and it was totally disgusting - it leaked everywhere,” she said, speaking frankly about the progesterone initially prescribed as a vaginal pessary. Frustrated, she used a tampon to soak up the product - which is only useful, she notes with a smile, if you want to get the tampon pregnant. And when her doctor recommended injecting progesterone instead, she recalls the ordeal of having to inject herself from behind by orienting herself just-so in the mirror. She was bruised for weeks.
The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), a UK-based public health agency, has officially recommended progesterone to “women who experience bleeding in early pregnancy and have previously had a miscarriage” as a way to prevent future miscarriages, a finding that has been recommended by multiple agencies worldwide.
And globally, an estimated 23 million miscarriages happen per year – affecting roughly one in every ten women in their lifetime. Although some miscarriages – in the case of a non-viable fetus, for example – are unavoidable, the World Health Organization says that many are preventable with effective care during pregnancy, such as the administration of progesterone.
Despite being the national guidance for miscarriage prevention, there’s no product in the UK that has the marketing authorization for miscarriage prevention – making it difficult, if not impossible, to procure.
Goodbye Goopy Meds – Hello, Innovation
“So why not just take a capsule?” One might wonder. But oral delivery for hormones is not recommended – they become metabolized by the liver and lose potency, while also causing unwanted side effects.
Intravaginal application is a more direct and safer route. Progesterone enters local blood vessels and concentrates in the uterus and nearby tissue where it’s needed. But the current accepted method of self-applying goopy medication is not user-friendly – it leaks everywhere, as Dr. Lara noted, which means it’s not actually getting absorbed.
In steps Calla Lily Clinical Care and their novel approach to intravaginal delivery. Similar in concept to a tampon, the absorbent, leak-free mini-liner and flexible, biocompatible polymer is designed to hold the therapeutic in place for drug delivery while preventing leakage – which means no waste, and no mess. This creates a more comfortable and effective method that can be used for a variety of medications, not just progesterone.
Lara’s personal experience with progesterone delivery had given her a great idea – but translating it into a viable medical-device business was going to be a whole different challenge. That’s where finding the right people to transform her vision into reality became a top priority.
Dr. Lara Zibers
Building a Team – and Building a Community
Lara met her co-founder, Thang Vo-Ta, in the midst of getting her MBA. Thang, who started off in finance and investment banking with Goldman Sachs before launching into entrepreneurship, was also working in the women’s health space but struggling to catch the ear of investors. At one point, Thang lamented to Lara that, as a man, it was difficult for him to convey to audiences the nuances of women’s health. A partnership blossomed – and they began to build their team of experienced scientists and biomedical engineers.
“If you think you can do everything yourself, good luck,” says Dr. Lara. “I don’t know what I don’t know, and I’m still learning. Make sure you surround yourself with the right people.”
When it comes to finding the right people to grow a business, an important next step is finding the right bridge to essential industry connections.
The Science Center and Calla Lily intersected when Lara arrived in Philadelphia to participate the fifth cohort of the Capital Readiness Program (CRP). There, Lara learned not only about the fundamentals of securing funding and developing a sustainable business strategy - she also became part of an extraordinary cohort of founder alumni who continue to work together and help each other long after the cohort’s last day.
“We’ve become a pretty tight network,” Lara explains, noting that she now is on the board of one of her fellow CRP cohort 5 companies, Dama Health.
After an intense day of learning about valuations and capitalization tables, Lara and several of her new founder friends pooled out into the summer heat to grab dinner at The Love, quickly discovering that they were excited and eager to support one other in their journeys. The group ate, drank wine, and exchanged contact info. “I remember at dinner Kavi said, ‘We’re going to get Lara some funding!’” she recalls, referring to founder Kavi Misri of AI-driven health platform Hibiscus Health. “I emailed him this summer when I was coming to New York, and in a week, we pulled together an investor networking dinner with 20 people,” she recalls. That investor networking dinner would be the first of several. “Startup Karma was drilled into our heads that week and I have completely embraced that concept. We should be supporting—not competing—with one another. We make introductions, we connect people. It’s so much more fulfilling that way.”
In a world where personal networks are often just as essential to startup success as access to capital, CRP helps thread the needle, encouraging founders to build the networks they need to survive – and thrive – in the challenging world of life science and healthcare entrepreneurship.
CRP isn’t just about getting to know other founders, either. During the week-long program, 10 startups work alongside five seasoned investors, allowing them to get an inside look at what goes through the mind of the person signing (or declining to sign) the checks.
For Lara, CRP stands out for the way it levels the playing field. “The Science Center team was the first to say from day one: no one is above anybody here, you’re all equal, and we were socializing we were making friends with the investors,” she explains. “It was very reassuring for the imposter system in all of us. I still am fighting that feeling all the time. How you treat founders is a huge, important step in that journey to seeing yourself what you want to be, which is an exited founder.”
From left to right, Capital Readiness Program Cohort 5 participants, Katie Bishop of Hibiscus Health, Christian Schafmeister of ThirdLaw Molecular, Kavi Misri of Hibiscus Health, and Dr. Lara Zibners of Calla Lily Clinical Care
The Future is Bright – and Full of Global Potential
Not only does CRP introduce founders to founders, and founders to investors – it also introduces life science and healthcare founders to the hotbed of activity and potential in Philadelphia.
“I hadn’t been to Philadelphia in years, and I did not realize how many teaching hospitals coexist in one small area … in my mind, Philadelphia was a cartoon on the map where there was CHOP and the Liberty Bell and that was it,” Lara says.
Visiting Philadelphia – and getting to know its deep connections in the healthcare and life science industry – made Lara aware of the region’s thriving ecosystem. “When Thang and I talk about where our landing spot in the US is, I’m always like: it could be Philadelphia. Because we’d have a nest to land in,” she says.
For now, Calla Lily remains UK-based: Lara says the U.S. expansion
will take some time to come to fruition. Despite the U.S. having a
larger potential market as compared to the UK, Calla Lily must take into
account the funding it’s received from the UK government and UK-based
investors. That said, they’re bullish about the global potential for
their company.
So what’s in the future for Lara and Calla Lily?
“We are being fast-tracked through the UK regulatory process for two indications in a single bioequivalent study, which we’ve been told is unheard of,” she explains. “They’ve approved a single bioequivalent study for IVF and for miscarriage prevention, so that will make us the world’s first approved miscarriage prevention drug device.”
They are also courting several strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and recently hosted a delegation from the Japanese Ministry of Affairs. In time, Lara sees other use cases for their therapeutic, such as cancer delivery – and they have a dedicated microbiome lab doing research as well. So far, Calla Lily Clinical Care has raised $4.06M, with the company closing a £2 million late seed round in January 2025.
“It’s off to the races once we show that our device can deliver a drug, and the drug we’re starting with – progesterone - is one that’s so safe and so commonly used, and there’s such a personal incentive for me to get it out there,” she explains.
The road to commercializing a medical device – and introducing it globally – is complex, but throughout it all Lara maintains her sense of humor – and sense of purpose. “Founding a startup is just a really dumb idea if you like security and free time,” she jokes.
Lara reflects that she never planned on becoming an entrepreneur – and probably wouldn’t have, if she didn’t feel such a strong calling to shake up women’s health. “You have to be so blindly optimistic and believe 100% in what you’re doing.”
